Legal Reformers Haven`t Made Case

CHICAGO — The debate over tort reform waxes even hotter with Vice President Dan Quayle`s recent appearance in Springfield before the Illinois Manufacturers Association. In this election year, tort reformers continue to jump on the Bush administration`s bandwagon in the highly politicized public policy debate targeting substantive change of the civil justice system.

But the pendulum appears to be swinging the other way as legal analysts and researchers examine the unsubstantiated claims made by the so-called reformers.

Vice President Quayle condemns the cost and delay of litigating civil cases, raising tort reform as the panacea. His proposals include requiring a losing plaintiff to pay the defendant`s legal fees, sharply curtailing contingency fees for lawyers and even outright abolition of punitive damages.

But those who argue that the civil justice system cries for drastic overhaul have not demonstrated that their proposals would work better. In fact, recently a number of independently conducted studies have found these proposals to be unworkable and unfair.

A study of product liability cases conducted by the Roscoe Pound Foundation concluded that the median punitive damages award was $625,000. During the 25-year period studied, only 355 punitive damages verdicts were returned by state and federal juries, an astonishingly low number.

Perhaps one of the best testing grounds for the controversial measures can be found in Colorado, which instituted many of them during the 1980s. A look at its current system shows the results are less than satisfactory, with the victims again paying the price.

Colorado instituted the ``loser pays`` rule in the hopes it would discourage frivolous lawsuits, but it also discouraged legitimate but risky ones. Often such an arrangement is the only access to justice for people without means.

President Bush has said that health care costs would be dramatically lower if patients were not allowed to file what he termed frivolous malpractice claims against doctors. But even in New York, where a tort reform package was enacted in 1985, no appreciable moderating of medical charges since then has been found.

Perhaps the real measures for comprehensive reform should be directed at the insurance industry. Too often an insurance company forces a case to go to trial that could have been settled years earlier but for a fraction of the verdict, curtailing the victim`s right to a fair and expedient settlement. The legitimately injured plaintiff should not be forced to bear this burden and suffer any more than already.